What is needed to make a perfect marriage? Compatibility, personality, and independence. The same ingredients are needed to make perfect wine marriages. Some of the greatest wines in the world, Bordeaux, Champagne, Rioja, Rhône are a result of blending different grapes.
The most aristocratic wine marriage is between Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in the the most prestigious vineyards in Bordeaux Here you find names you may have heard about but whose wines you probably never tasted, such as Chateau Margaux, Chateaux Lafite, Chateau Latour, Chateau Mouton Rothschild, Chateau Haut Brion. The top wines from these wineries are blends or marriages between Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, plus some other varieties that play an important supporting role.
Cabernet Sauvignon makes wines that are deeply coloured, with flavours of blackcurrant, oak and cigar box, coming from its time in barrels. When young its tannins are firm and need time to mature and mellow. Merlot is a medium to full bodied wine with blackberry and black cherry fruit flavours, oak and chocolate with softer tannins that Cabernet Sauvignon. Together the make a harmonious wine.
Garnacha, Shiraz and Monastrell, known as GSM, make a perfect wine marriage. The home of this blend is the southern Rhône in Châteauneuf du Pape, Gigondas, and Côte du Rhône. GSM is a very popular blend with winemakers from California to Southern Australia and closer to home, in Jumilla and Yecla.
Garnacha, known as Grenache in France, is famous for its Rosés especially from Navarra. While the wines are full bodied wines with strawberry jam flavours and a high level of alcohol they are never strong in colour. Syrah or Shiraz has a purply, black colour with blackcurrant, cherry, plum, black pepper and smokey flavours. Meanwhile Monastrell, known as Mouvèdre in France, produces wines that are nearly black in colour, full bodied with black fruits, tannic, smokey flavours. Together they complement each other adding complexity, colour and flavour to the final blend. A perfect wine marriage.
Garnacha also makes a perfect wine marriage with Tempranillo to make Rioja. Tempranillo has lovely aromas of strawberries and vanilla ice cream, coming from the American oak barrels in which the wine is aged, which works when blended with Garnacha.
Semillon is a white grape that works best when blended notably with Sauvignon Blanc. Together they can make excellent dry and sweet wines. Sauternes, the most famous sweet wine in the world, is blend of these two grapes. Like any good marriage, compatibility is an essential ingredient. Sauvignon Blanc is known for its distinctive styles of wines from places such as Sancerre in the Loire or Marlborough in New Zealand, however, somewhat surprisingly perhaps, when blended with Semillon, in its home of Bordeaux, it usually plays a supporting role.
Not all wines make perfect marriages, for example Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, while they make excellent partners to other varieties do no enhance the qualities of each other when blended together. There are also grapes that will always be loners, most notably Pinot Noir (Champagne being the exception) and Riesling, two noble grapes producing some of the finest wines in the world but only as single grape varieties.
